


The Stamp of Whiteworm

by Tamoszius (Sectionladvivi)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alcohol, Asia, Demonic Possession, Dragons, Platonic Female/Male Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-07-13 20:23:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16025336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sectionladvivi/pseuds/Tamoszius
Summary: A hapless brewboy's exploits involving slakes, Tigerheads, dragons, and, god willing, the occasional tall, cold one.





	1. arrack

I may as well have been born in that crook of river between falls and water wheel, because that was where I imagined myself springing out of, fully formed and alarming the koi. The wet nurse had told me something about far off lands, once, but I didn’t believe I’d ever been farther than the cane fields, and I didn’t know (or want to know) any life but the one I lived at Greenworm Brewery.

As one of the senior brew boys, I figured it was my right to deny my birth and be proud of the place I had earned in the world: the only place you could buy a hot glass of Old Black Bastard brewed proper for a ten days ride. A dungeon century deep with wax and cork sealed barrels, enough for ten generations to get drunk on. Ten varieties of Lichdrop! Rice wine unmatched, fermented mad honey, ciders sweet and spiced, beer and tea with well wishes blessed into the flagons and woven in the bags! The purest water for the purest drink, water beaten clean on mountain rock and fattened on snowmelt, too high in the mountains to be tainted by yak piss--which is what we called the competitors’ brew, when we were feeling generous!

It was summer still, and the water mill Greenworm was known for was pounding full force. It was the first thing I heard when I awoke, when I was still slightly befuddled by dreams of being a butterfly.

When I realized I was awake, I leapt out of bed and pulled on my sandals, raced across the bridge to watch the white water foam beneath me. Gripping the edge of the bridge, I shouted down at it: but my words were lost in the rush of water.

Pleased, I ran down the rest of the bridge and down the stairs, my sandals clapping against the rock.

At the base of the steps, monopolizing the courtyard, was the old greenworm himself. Or, once-green.

One of the few dragons not lost totally to time, aged out of legend like a fine wine, the scales of the brewery guardian had darkened with time and earned him his name: the Old Black Bastard. He was a rocky-looking thing with a thorny brow, and I wasn’t sure if his lunky appearance was the nature of his breed or the result of centuries of colliding with everything from knights to mountainsides.

I hopped over the tip of his tail to rattle on his scales with my fists.

“Hello, Obbie,” I said.

He opened one eye a sliver. “Arrack,” he said. “Did you ever hear the parable of the boy who woke a sleeping dragon?”

“I have not.”

“He was delicious.”

“Aw, are you hungry?” I rapped on his belly scales, which were getting mossy. “You need a scrub. You smell like you were just pulled from the lake.”

“I smell dissent,” he grumbled. _Oh, here we go,_ I thought. Obbie was always a little odd when first roused. Misty as a mountaintop. He stretched out his claws like a cat, rolling over but being careful not to crush me, letting me hop out of the way. He inclined his head toward me and rested it on the scarred stone, opening his jaws just enough to let out speech. “The mountains speak of fresh peaks, the grass hires assassins.”

“Grassassins?” I suggested.

Obb got like this sometimes, moody and prophetic. I had learned that the only solution was to be whimsical. Dragons liked whimsy. Or at least this one did.

“Grassassins,” he said gravely. “Wielding their ember blades.”

“That’s good,” I said. “How about… _leav_ ing none alive?”

“A _field_ in search of their quarry.”

“Maybe sewing that dissent you were talking about, eh, Obbie?”

He blinked, and looked at me as though awake for the first time. “Don’t you have work to do today?”

“Only in name,” I said. “I have ‘deliveries’. Really I’m taking the cart down the hill to meet Chaha.”

“Oh?” Obb exhaled in the patronizing way only a dragon could. His breath smelled like he had been chewing old casks again. “What does Chaha want this time?”

“A few jugs of the old numbstuff. You know, for her father.” I evaded his judgmental glance.

“She is going to sell that behind closed doors the minute you leave.”

“He has pain in his joints.” I defended her.

“She is making herself rich off of your affections,” he said.

“I can only deliver the booze.” I shrugged with arms wide. “What Chaha does with it is up to her.”

“Hmmm,” said Obb, but in a dragonly way, which sounded more like. “Ggggggggh.”

“Wish me safe travels,” I said, tapping him on the scales between his nostrils.

“I will not,” said the dragon, and went back to sleep.

—

I finished loading up the cart, leaving the jugs nestled safe as babies in straw and meal. Before catching Tamaraw, I went to wash off the dust and sweat I had collected. There was a small offset courtyard dedicated to this, where I removed and hung up everything but my sandals, and pulled a lever to set in motion the invisible rotation of tubes that would redirect some of the river over top of me.

It was frigid, and though unsurprised, I still yelped, and quickly slapped myself clean and jumped out of the way. I grabbed my clothes, and ran back up the stairs.

I almost made it unseen. Shraey, the other senior brewman, was coming out of his room when I whipped past. “Put some clothes on, Arrack!” he shouted, his voice lost behind me as I waved once and zipped around the last corner.

My room was barely a room. A tiny chamber nestled in the wall, it was characterized by a small raised mat, a slit window, and a cage of metal hanging from the ceiling. I pulled one of its dangling strings. The cage’s arms opened and expanded out. It lowered itself, and inside were all of my things. Mostly clothes and tools, they were tied into the skeleton in neat compartments. I took what I needed and folded the rest away. I tied my wet clothes onto one of the longest wire arms, double and triple checking the knots and closures, then yanked another string. The wire cadaver zipped back up towards the ceiling and popped the long arm out the window, where the breeze started whipping my wet clothes dry.

Knowing full well they would get filthy on the road, I had still picked out my nicest clothes to wear, the client greeting blues with gold trim and embroidered cap. A client hadn’t come in person for weeks and I figured I could risk dirtying them. I would have time to clean and mend them before the season was in full swing.

Anyway, I was going to see Chaha, who thought I had a pretty good life at the brewery, and I wanted to maintain the illusion.

I slipped back into my sandals and, lastly, put on the charm she had given me. She had sworn it was blessed gold, but a chipped corner revealed the truth: painted clay. I smiled as I tucked it into my collar and I ran to fetch Tamaraw.


	2. the slake

Tamaraw was a tiny black buffalo with a broken horn. He hated me because I smelled like Obbie. To catch him sometimes I had to chase him around with pockets full of cubed yam, and he would run around flipping his tail up like an actual dragon was after him. Today, I was lucky, and he wasn’t too offended by the smell. I hitched him up, gave him his yams, and got up into the seat to head off down the road.

I looked up as we fell under the shadow of the brewery. It was an old place, very old according to Obbie, who liked to joke that it was the last of the old monasteries. The red walls were well hidden in the jungle, covered in vines and mingling with the ruddy trunks of trees, and only the handful of white towers and platforms jutted out of the mountainside and into the sun. We passed the base, the oldest and most well worn steps, wide enough for a whole procession to mount. Far above I saw Obbie’s tail dangling over the edge of the high and unbounded courtyard.

I urged Tamaraw on, and we passed out of the shadow of the brewery and into the shade of the jungle. The sound of the river’s tumult followed us awhile; though it was invisible through the dense plant life, the river roared on out of view, and we followed its trail indirectly on the rich red dirt of the road.

It was an easy journey. The road turned and sloped gently downwards. It was the only road to and from Greenworm; Tamaraw knew it so well, I could almost lay back and enjoy the sun flickering through the trees, and leave the path to him.

We were about twenty minutes down the road when the jungle fell silent all around us. Tamaraw stopped dead. The cart rocked to a halt, and I heard the bottles gently clink. I sat up straight, and I listened.

Nothing but the sound of white water.

Suddenly remembering something Obb had told me, a long time ago, I looked up. The light was shining through the gaps in the trees. One moment it was clear, and brilliant. And then it was gone. I felt a chill. I held my breath. I could feel Tamaraw shaking through the cart braces. I counted breaths— one. Two. Three.

The shadow passed. Sunlight struck the trees once more.

I exhaled slowly, and so to did the jungle around me, the birds and bugs slowly whirring back to life. Tamaraw made a mournful sound.

“Huh!” said a strange voice, out of nowhere. “That was a dragon, wasn’t it? Dragons abroad! Just when I thought my mounting inconveniences were abating.”

I looked around. I saw nothing, no one, not in the trees or in the road.

“Who’s there?” I asked.

“Pah!” said the voice. “Can’t see me, can you. I thought that might be the case. I’ve lost my flesh again.”

Looking around for the source of the voice, I spotted an odd spot just ahead. There was something casting its shadow on the side of the road. It was not a large shadow, but it was as dark and defined as mine, or Tamaraw’s. But there was nothing there.

“What’s your name?” asked the voice.

“Arrack,” I said. “Who— what are you?”

“Ah, you ask the right question, Arrack.” The shadow, still without a host, drifted closer, and so did the voice. “I am a ‘what’ and not a ‘who’. Personal names are for things that walk the earth. I have only a general name, like ‘a worm’, or ‘a man’. I am a _slake_. Like a worm, I may live inside of a man, but I myself will never live.”

“I’ve never heard of a slake,” I said.

“Well, there aren’t many of us. And soon there may be one less… for like a worm, we may live outside of man, but not for long. And I’ve lost mine! Have you seen any loose flesh, Arrack? I forget what it looks like—it’s hard to observe a thing when you’re inside it, after all—but it was in the company of a strange child. A little pretending godling.”

“I haven’t heard of any godlings, either,” I said. “Nor seen strange children. I’m sorry?” I squinted into the empty air as if I could make myself see whatever was casting the shadow.

“Ah, oh well,” said the slake. “This isn’t the first time I’ve lost track of it, but I swear it will be the last. Next time, I’m going to seal myself in with burnt blood. Thank you for your time, Arrack." The voice paused, mused. "What is it people say now, to say a polite good-bye? Is it still ‘peace upon you’, or that whimsical ‘oh the god in me salutes the god in you’ fare-thee-well?”

“It’s worse than that,” I said. “If we’re going to say a polite good-bye, we’ll be here all day.”

The slake laughed: a surprising musical sound, only a little nonsensical. Kind of like if a human could laugh backwards. “Oh, I like you, Arrack. All right then, here is an old one: ‘May your skies be free of dragons’!”

The shadow disappeared as quickly as it had come, and so did the voice. I had no way of knowing where it had gone. Uneasily, I thought... _It could only have gone one way or the other. Down the same path I'm going, or towards Greenworm._ Neither seemed a happy option.

Had I witnessed something unholy? I wondered. I felt a little grimy, and not just from the inevitable jungle sweat. I wanted to go dunk my face in a calm river inlet. I wanted to go ask Obbie if that had really been a dragon passing overhead before, and if so, did he know them?

I wanted to ask Obbie if he had ever heard of a slake.

I wanted to ask Chaha, too.


	3. chaha

The lilting road evened out and went straight at the bottom of our little mountain, dropping off into valley that stretched out long and green. The river flattened out here too, looking innocent, its bumpy-glass surface belying the frigid turbulence underneath.

The cane grass needed harvesting. It rose high above my head as our cart broke from the woods and into the field, quickly obscuring the view of the valley. Out of view, the river was a murmur, not a roar.

You had to be careful out here. Not often, but sometimes, there were tigers lurking in the tall grass. I didn’t usually worry about it; the scent of a dragon was enough to deter them, even moreso than Tamaraw, who was used to it.

Tamaraw wasn’t as used to the claustrophobia of the cane. He stomped and blew out of his wet nose. I had to sigh, disembark, and take him by his nose and lead. He moseyed reluctantly after me.

I had stopped to adjust my sandal when the tiger face popped out of the cane in front of us.

Tamaraw bawled and threw his head. I was knocked to the ground. I managed to keep ahold of his nose ring and stop him bolting off, saving the cart, and snagged a rock on my way back to my feet. I throw it, and it bounced off the tiger face with a wooden _clack_.

“Not funny!” I shouted. “That’s your crap in the cart, you want it to end up in the river?”

Chaha pulled back the tiger mask with a grin. It was a mean-spirited, unrepentant smile. “I have a fishing pole,” she said.

Chaha was a few years older than me, though we were the exact same height. When we had met, she had been much taller, and since I’d grown up she routinely threatened me that if I got any taller she would push me down the mountain. We had been friends for years, and she was always coming up with reasons to push me down the mountain.

“You have _my_ fishing pole,” I corrected. I had lent it to her after she broke her own, blaming it on a dragon-sized catfish. Obb had chastised me then and would probably chastise me again when I returned without it.

Chaha waved her hand to show she was above such pedestrian concepts as ownership. Chaha was a small-framed girl with big cheeks and a broad smile, showing just as much teeth as the tiger mask. Her hair was black and her skin ruddy-brown from the sun. She had very mysterious, very aloof eyes— again, more like a tiger than a girl. She has a perfect red dot in the center of her forehead.

She passed me by and jumped up into the car, rifling around in the grain to count her bottles.

“It’s all there.” I stood watching with hands on hips. “You think I’d cheat you?”

‘If you were smart,” she said. “But you’re not. It’s all here.” She sounded almost disappointed. She turned and leaned on the edge of the cart, looking down at me with worry in her brow. “Arrack, what are you going to do when I’m gone?”

“Finally rub two coins together,” I said, then, suspiciously, asked, “Are you going somewhere?”

“Yes!” she said. “But not without you— not today, anyway.”

“Aren’t we going to your house?”

“No. We’re going to the kite festival.”

“No we’re not.”

“Absolutely we are.”

I didn’t get back in the cart, instead stood stubbornly rooted like Tamaraw, though like Tamaraw I knew it was fruitless. Chaha went where she wanted.

But why did _I_ have to go?

The Kite Festival came once a year, when the temperatures were the mildest and the wind was just right. The name conjured gentle images of children toiling to build kites in the shape of fish and butterflies, parents helping them to finish in time to unveil their creations, and once upon, that had been the festival.

Now, the Kite Festival was a dueling ground of gamblers and hoodlums. The kites themselves had been given razor fangs and claws to take each other down, a sport that usually resulted in scuffles on the ground.

“There are gangs there," I said. "The White Tails. The Elephant Snuffers. Drug runners. Tabooists. Big, nasty dogs.”

But Chaha wasn’t having it.

“You know what it _doesn’t_ have?” she asked. “Greenworm Brewery rice wine. Condensed, uncut Old Black Bastard. White blessing beer.”

“That’s because our vendors aren’t suicidal."

“Exactly! That, Arrack, is why we are going to make a _killing_.”

“Yeah. Because we are going to get killed.”

I ended up in the cart anyway.

We emerged from the cane fields at the edge of the bridge. Chaha hopped down to unlock the gate, and I contemplated turning Tamaraw around and prompting him back home. The main thing that stopped me was the knowledge that Chaha would go on without me. I wasn’t stupid enough to think I could protect her from anything, but I knew that two was better than one.

The gate clanged open and sent a flock of wild doves scattering into the sky. Glumly I imagined tying a note to one of their legs and wishing it home to Obb or Shraey anyone with the authority to divert our mission.

From the gate, Chaha looked back and grinned, then turned and ran up the bridge, and the tiger mask grinned too from the back of her head.

I sighed and shook my head.

What could I do but follow?


	4. riders from Qitan

Chaha ran back to hop onto the cart, and we left the gate and the bridge behind us. The valley opened up once more, the ripples of mountain unfolding on either size of the deceptively placid river. Here, the sugarcane gave way to millet, and eventually the river broke out and became even gentler, and the lower half of the mountains faded into tiers of rice paddies.

A trail of brick, crushed with white lime embedded deep by centuries of travel, ran up one of the hills more obscured with forest. As we passed, I looked up. The mountain, capped with enigmatic cloud, was hiding a temple. Prayer flags sprouted in tatters from rock leading the path upwards.

“Look,” said Chaha. She produced a kite she had made, unfolding it and holding it up for me to see. “Seem familiar?”

It was a dragon, black, with a cartoonishly cross expression.

“Do you think he’d like it?”

“If Obb saw that, he’d singe it into nothing,” I said.

She tugged a string, and out popped the razored claws and sharp fangs. “I’m gonna win some cash with Obbie’s help,” she said, eyes agleam.

I opened my mouth to protest, then closed it. If Chaha was so determined to get herself killed, there was nothing I was going to be able to do to stop it.

That was when we topped the ridge and came into view of the festival.

Tents dotted the valley below like the heads of flowers, some of them huge and bulbous like mushrooms, some tiny, like little unopened buds. The number of them was astonishing; I couldn’t remember the festival having been this huge. On our end, the thin tendril of road we had taken had been nearly empty, but here the road opened up, and I could see all the caravans and carts raising dust in all directions, like the roads were lit up with smoke.

But more astonishing than the tents, and the size of the crowds, were the village kites.

Each lashed to a barge, drifting slowly down this branch of the river, these particular kites were the size of a small dragon. Each a different shape and covered in different colors and patterns, proudly representing a different village or community, they followed one after another like a train. At the head was a school of koi, followed by a determined looking stork, followed by more fish, the largest of them all a black catfish that must have come all the way from Tonle Thom.

Chaha and I were so preoccupied gaping at the display that we didn't notice an approaching pack of riders until the horses were upon us.

The small horses swarmed our cart, all short and thick-crested, covered in spots. Their saddles were decorated for the festival and high backed. Most of the riders were girls, their faces dark from the sun and wind-whipped, but the one who came up to smack the cart with a whip was a boy.

“Greenworm!” he observed, tapping the faded paint, then pointing to the dragon mark on my sleeve. “Aren’t you folk too good for the festival, these days?”

He was way too young to be so snide, I thought. Chaha spoke up before I could finish scowling. She leaned around to address the rider. “Greenworm has fallen on hard times,” she said. She had pulled her mask on again, and leered at them through the jade lenses.

The riders recoiled from Chaha’s guise.

“Greenworm travels with Tigerheads now?” The boy asked me.

“Hard times,” I said. “Can’t afford reputable security, these days.” Chaha smacked me between the shoulderblades.

The boy eyed Chaha’s masked face with unease. “We’ve come down from Qitan,” he said. “I’m Abaoji. I knew a boy who worked at Greenworm, a friend. Shraey?”

Shraey was probably just now figuring out that I wasn’t going to be back that day, and taking up double duty on chores, and cursing me.

“He’s been promoted,” I lied. “Far too busy for these trips.”

“ _Far_ too busy,” emphasized Chaha.

Abaoji looked disappointed, but nodded. “Well, for the name of Shraey, you have friends here, Greenworm.” He indicated his pack of sisters. “You don’t have to resort to _Tigerheads_.” He indicated Chaha with his whip, tapped the cart once more, then wheeled his horse around, and they all went galloping down the hill towards the festival.

“That was rude of him,” said Chaha.

“You have _got_ to stop letting people think you’re a Tigerhead.”

“I _am_ a Tigerhead.”

“Your mother was a Tigerhead, maybe.”

“And doesn’t the blood flow from mother to cub?”

I shook my head, crossed the reins in my hands, and sent Tamaraw on. “The day you sprout claws, you let me know.”


End file.
